nor'easter
Well-Known Member
Well of course it doesn't HAVE to be. Just because WDW management have been stupid in the past doean't mean they necessarily have to be in the future. But the point is that past experience has been a good guide.
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Spirited News and Observations and Opinions ...
- Thread starter WDW1974
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NormC
Well-Known Member
The amount of physical location tracking is still speculation and may in fact be no more than what they already do with the KTTW card. Every time you swipe your KTTW card to enter the park, make a purchase, dine or get a FP they can get an idea of where you are and what you are doing. Even with today's RFID technology if 10 guests are near a sensor at the same time it will not be able to read them all so they are going to have to deliberately place them to collect specific data rather than globally track your every move.
True.
Correct. Neither currently apply to the Magic Band.
They track you to collect your data on your in Park habits just like the current KTTW cards. Without your data there is no reason to track your body.
As far as outside of the park habits, they will only be able to track what you let them. I see it like a rewards card or your Capital One credit card. All the cash back rewards do not come from Capital One directly. They come from businesses that Capital One sells your data to for targeted marketing; ie. Where does the average user spend their money and time and how can we target them and get them to spend more.
Exactly what Disney wants as well.
flynnibus
Premium Member
You missed a point.. they may be trying to 'enhance the guest experience' by making them happier while separating them from their money.
Example: You go into the car dealership to get your car serviced... and when you get the diagnosis.. the agent says 'Mr Bill, it seems you need a new doojacki, but I see here you've been a loyal customer and we are going to take care of that item for you at no cost'.
The dealership didn't make a nicer waiting room, they didn't pickup their floors better, they hit the customer where people feel it the most. Their wallet. By offering a discount, the dealership is building good will (leading to more referals) and likely making the customer more loyal to them vs the competition.
And it doesn't have to just be 'freebies' - discounts are also used to help close deals.
Example: we know from your demographics you like products A,B,C but we notice you haven't bought any of those this trip. We can send you a coupon that may entice you to actually go out of your way to actually purchase A, B, or C. The company gave up some margin to close the deal.. but is still ahead.
These are examples where the customer feels good - and the company didn't do a single thing to change their product that the customer consumed.
Successful companies are NOT just about 'we have the best product' or 'we have the cleanest floors..', etc. Customer loyalty and attach rates are manipulated through so many means. It's not just the idealistic world presented by customers all the time 'I just want the best product!' - yet not everyone will go out of their way, or necessarily pay for the best product.. and often the guy that built the best product, but failed elsewhere.. ultimately fails.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
You really need to retake Introduction to US Government.
I think at present the financial motive is to push people towards the early and full reservations. It enables them to know more precisely where people will be and when. Those who chose not to partake will either not know any better or hopefully be satiated with fun queues.
flynnibus
Premium Member
I don't think so. As I said 'different beasts'. People are intrinsically going to behave differently if they can't eat at a particular location.. vs not being able to experience attractions (their prime reason for coming to WDW).
People are acting like they can come up with all these consequences that Disney must have overlooked. The reality is the vast majority are going to be conscious decisions on Disney's part. It's not the technology - it's Disney who is ultimately going to decide how it rolls.
Just like with ADRs... there is nothing about a reservation system that says you shouldn't be able to get day of seating.. it's just Disney has chosen to allocate so much of their capacity to ADRs that the non-reservation is effectively squeezed out. That is a choice by Disney. So when Lee says 'whats to keep me...' the answer is simple. Disney's choice.
flynnibus
Premium Member
They let you graduate?
This is almost as funny as RCID people not being able to vote..
Lets just leave it as.. you have no clue about the texas case and what the ruling met. Trust me, it has zero applicability to WDW's MyMagic+ program.
nor'easter
Well-Known Member
Well, there goes years of Political Science studies down the drain....
Bryner84
Well-Known Member
Tokyo Dining is a part of TiW but I didn't factor in that discount as I am not an AP holder...ran those calculations too and I can make (2) 5 day trips with park hoppers per year with the usual discounts offered and it was essentially a break even as well. We usually are a once or twice a year visitor, and now that we have a 5 month old (who won't be traveling with us until she is older) our trips are a little more unpredictable.
GrumpyFan
Well-Known Member
True, I made some assumptions there, but I based them on Disney's own statements regarding one of the reasons for FP+, to reduce wait times for guests and allow them to plan in advance. I understand there are ride capacity issues, and only a limited number of seats/rides per day, so how they will figure all of this out is somewhat intriguing to me. But, in order to keep guests happy and achieve the stated goal, they're going to have to do this somehow. My feelings are that it will be an ongoing process they will have to work thru. However, consider this. On an average day, there are roughly 54,000 guests staying on property in Disney hotels. It's not an accurate representation, but if you divide that number by 4 (number of parks) it works out to roughly 13,000 hotel guests per day, per park. Then divide that number by the rides available for FP+ reservations, and you start to see kind of an idea of how many might be using the system. I'm guesstimating mine based on numbers drawn from the annual theme park attendance surveys, and known number of hotel rooms and an average occupancy. There's obviously a lot of other factors to consider, but you get the basic idea. Admittedly, by my own numbers, I still think Toy Story Mania is going to be a tough one to get FPs for, but hopefully they've taken these numbers to the extreme and figured out the fine details to determine if it will work and just how.
thehowiet
Wilson King of Prussia
Disney better be prepared to give me A LOT of coupons if that's how they are hoping to enhance my guest experience. I may be in the minority, but simply getting a coupon doesn't enhance my experience, especially when attractions are literally falling apart. "We're sorry about all of the broken AA's in Splash Mountain, but here is a 10% off coupon for a plush Mickey!"
I also think comparing the cleanliness of a car dealership to what is supposed to be a premium entertainment product is very different, unless you're talking about a Porsche dealership, in which case they better have a nice waiting room with clean floors. If you sell yourself as a premium product/experience and charge a premium price but don't deliver a premium product/experience, that is a problem.
To me that's like saying "you can go see the really good movie down the road for full price, or you can go see an OK movie here for a few dollars less." That may work if you aren't looking to see a great movie and are just looking to get out. I just don't know how well that mentality translates to what is supposed to be a premium entertainment experience.
flynnibus
Premium Member
These are different concepts - my point was to illustrate there are valid (and appreciated) ways to add value and improve customer perception WITHOUT touching the product itself.
A simple way to look at it. A commodity product can be bought in many places. It may even be bought at the same price. A store needs to distinguish itself from the other resellers to land business. There are many many many ways to do this.. all while selling the same exact product the guy around the corner does.
Do people think a company that invests in non-product services is wasting their money because it's not what the consumer buys/consumes directly?
Too many 'customers' are oblivious to how they are manipulated or what really goes into making something successful. That's fine as a customer.. it's not their role to worry about it, but just to take the best of what appeals to them. But you can't use that same oblivious customer train of thought to decide how to build the business.
I get that people wish Disney was spending here, instead of there. And people have their own opinions on what should be prioritized. But lets not trash something as pointless or meaningless simply because it didn't make the top of your list.
I don't think Disney's show standards are up to snuff - however that doesn't mean I think Disney should abandon all other customer service aspects because I believe show standards should be #1 for a Disney product.
Disney is big enough.. they should be able to focus on more than one thing at a time.
tomman710
Well-Known Member
I agree with you that they can "improve" the guests' experience and create brand loyalty through "customer service" or "freebies" ... however ... I think it's all smoke and mirrors and intelligent guests won't buy into. That's part of the problem (one of many without getting into the ethical and legal problems) I have with this is it's basically exploiting the intelligence of a majority of guests that are wowed by sparkly lights!
If I could use your illustration from earlier about the car dealership. Yes the mechanic could come out and offer a free doojacki and the customer could be thrilled with the customer service and loyalty ... however what the poor unassuming customer didn't recognize is that the rest of their services were jacked up 30%, the parts were overpriced, and there is no such thing as a doojacki, even if they handed you a 4 year limited warranty on it.
That's what Disney is doing, sure uninformed/unenlightened guests may gush about a free meal or a free fast pass or whatever ... what they don't realize is everything else is jacked up beyond normal pricing structures, the "cost" for that free meal is in essence more than if they ala carted their whole trip, and a fast pass literally costs the company nothing (in actuality that fastpass conceptually could hurt other guests if extrapolated out) ...
Disney saying this was done to "enhance guest experience" is laughable.
thehowiet
Wilson King of Prussia
I think you bring up some valid points here, and to an extent I think you're right on. I guess my point is that in my opinion Disney wasn't selling the same product as anybody else when they were at the top of their game. They had their own unique product that was unmatched by anybody else in the industry, so much so that I didn't even consider their competition's offering to be the same product. It was a unique offering that you couldn't get anywhere else. When that is the case you become the only game in town. Again, this is all just my opinion. I think what you are saying makes sense when you are offering the same thing as "the other guys," but when you offer something that nobody can replicate you've already distinguished yourself.
I also agree with your last point that in theory Disney is big enough to focus on more than one thing at a time. The problem I have is I don't think they've been able to do one of those things very well as of lately so it makes me question whether or not they actually do have that ability to focus on their core competencies while also doing something else. Companies seem to sometimes forget what it was that distinguished them from their competition.
flynnibus
Premium Member
Funny... I don't recall seeing the stream of Magical Express customers walking away because they felt their intelligence was being insulted by offering a free ride to/from the airport... even tho the cost is covered through markups elsewhere.
Not every customer buys on true TCO - many are willing to pay more for convenience.. another factor in how one attracts and retains customers. Convenience is rarely free either to the business.
flynnibus
Premium Member
This is true - but it's also a common struggle of being the #1. You've now made yourself a target for everyone to undercut and copy. It's extremely difficult to keep doing one thing, better, better, and better, and better again. Yet customers keep asking for new, new new, and newer things again year over year. It's a difficult situation and often leads to people diversifying to have new green fields they can exploit.
This ties back to the 'arms race' comments before and seeing this direction from Disney as a way of differentiating themselves in the market.
It's like the first restaurants that offered drive-up service. They didn't introduce new foods - they altered what the expectation and experience of getting food was. Through innovation and integration - they rewrote the book. That's what I see Disney trying to do with the offerings here.. differentiate their baseline product and rewrite the expectations of what visiting a theme park is like.
Are they right in how people ultimately want to visit? I don't know.. but we're about to see an evolution either way
It's like when Apple introduced the iPhone when everyone insisted it needed a physical keyboard. The physical keyboard was what we knew.. it was what we found to be the best solution of what was available. Apple thought they had a better mouse trap and FORCED it as the only path.. Apple was ultimately right - they did have a better way.. even if the customers at the time didn't know it. The lesson being - what we know and knew from the past.. isn't 100% knowledge.I think too many people are seeing this as 'nextgen vs new attractions' as if Disney is never going to add new attractions anymore or something. I don't see NextGen investment as the end of new attractions or the end of upkeep. It's a matter of what they are rolling out in scale now. There is still lots of opportunity to focus on the other issues as well.
I mean lets be obvious.. the lack of new attractions people desired predates NextGen being a big resource sink by a long shot. So I think that problem of lack of interesting turnover of attractions is its own beast.
IMHO - I think the problem is they don't see it as a problem to start with
'Good enough' attitude...
crispy
Well-Known Member
If this program gave them exactly the same information as KTTW cards, then there would be no point in spending 1.5+ billion dollars on it unless Disney has the stupidest executives on the planet (which is actually a distinct possibility, but I am giving them the benefit of the doubt). There is absolutely no point in spending that kind of money if you can get the same information from an existing program which means they see a huge profit in this.
Personally, I don't want their profits to come at the expense of my privacy. I am kicking myself right now because I have a trip planned in February to do the Princess Half. If I knew in July what I know now....
flynnibus
Premium Member
How much of the NextGen budget do you propose is spent on the personal profiling aspects?
crispy
Well-Known Member
Probably a lot more than is being spent to enhance the guest experience.
flynnibus
Premium Member